Arleen Spenceley, Times Staff Writer

Arleen Spenceley is an editorial assistant and staff writer for the Pasco Times edition of the Tampa Bay Times. Before she joined the staff in July 2007, she wrote as a Times correspondent in Hernando and Pasco counties for three and a half years. She graduated from the University of South Florida with a bachelor's degree in journalism in December 2007 and continued to work for the Times until Dec. 2012, when she resigned — albeit reluctantly — to finish her master's degree. She graduated with her M.A. in rehabilitation and mental health counseling in May 2013 and happily returned to the Times staff in November.

NEW PORT RICHEY — While Eric Mullins' mom worked as a lifeguard when he was a kid, she couldn't afford the cost of music instruction for him. So she struck a deal with a pianist.

The woman provided "piano lessons for my mom's kid, and my mom gave her kids swimming lessons," said Mullins, 37, now a music teacher at Genesis Preparatory School and co-owner of a music school called Mullins Music....

NEW PORT RICHEY — As the longtime owner a roof-cleaning company, Dante Rodriguez has rubbed elbows with lots of homeowners associations and with homeowners. He has learned about their concerns.

Among them?

"The spray-paint guys," said Rodriguez, 49 — the ones he says show up to paint people's house numbers onto their driveways.

So Rodriguez did some research. And because of what he learned, he started another business: Bay Area Thermoplastics, which manufactures reflective curb markers that display a home­owner's house number and are an alternative to spray paint....

NEW PORT RICHEY — Next week, Wheelchair/Stretcher Limo, a non-emergency transportation service, will celebrate its 30th anniversary, a milestone that makes its founder, JoLynn Spivey, proud.

In 1985, Spivey, now 57, worked as an emergency medical technician for an ambulance company in Pinellas County. There, she started a non-emergency unit to transport patients whose conditions weren't critical....

PORT RICHEY — Dave Cruz's first crash on a motorcycle, in 1981, shook him. The recovery after his second crash, in 1997, took a year. But it wasn't until 2004 that Cruz took his first class on how to properly and safely operate a motorcycle.

What he learned prompted a question, said Cruz, 59, who now owns Florida Professional Motorcycle Training: "How the heck did I stay alive on a bike for 35 years?"...

NEW PORT RICHEY — When the owners of a Main Street produce market decided in 2008 to turn it into a cafe and creamery called Market Off Main, they picked an unlikely place to put it: in a run-down house.

"It had been unoccupied for several years," said Jerry Kuss, 72, who found the building and now co-owns the business with Rose Mohr, 67.

"It didn't look very inviting from the front," Mohr said. "It was a location that was not appreciated (by the public)."...

Sister Miriam Cosgrove peeled back the black plastic tarp that covered a 250-gallon fish tank. The tilapia inside swam to the surface. "A feeding frenzy," Cosgrove, 73, said as the fish fought for each pellet of food that the Catholic sister dropped into the water.

The tank is one of 10 in the greenhouse next to Holy Name Monastery, installed in December so Cosgrove, who will have been a Benedictine nun for 55 years this summer, could minister to the world in a new way: with aquaponics — "a sustainable, self-sufficient fish farm."...